North East Exchange
Connecting artist, venues and festivals
Hello
North East Exchange – previously known as North East Artist Development Network/Meet the Programmers – exists to bring artists and programmers together, to get to know each other and share ideas and knowledge.
We were due to hold our first event under the new name in March, which was cancelled due to COVID-19.
At the same time, we were asking venues and festivals to formally become members and pay a small annual membership fee to cover the cost of the events, to ensure we could continue to offer them free to artists.
We know that lots of events have reimagined themselves as virtual meetings, and we have considered whether North East Exchange should do this too. However, we have heard from lots of artists that they are ‘zoomed out’ and that virtual meetings don’t work for everyone. The whole point of North East Exchange is to spark conversations, and it is tricky to do that in an informal way in a virtual space. We also want to avoid duplicating other online networks and forum.
We have therefore decided to pause North East Exchange until 2021, when we hope we can return with a physical event. At the point, we will introduce the proposed membership fees for venues and festivals.
In the meantime, please stay in touch, with us and with each other.
Annabel, Dan and Lydia
ARC Stockton on behalf of North East Exchange
August 2020